Banned in Boston The first book to be banned in Boston was The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, written in 1650 by William Pynchon (1590-1662), a distant ancestor of Thomas Pynchon and the first European settler of Springfield, MA. In the book, Pynchon argued that the price of atonement was obedience, rather than punishment and …
. Late antiquity, Asia Minor. The residents of a manufactured housing community are gathered near the entrance to the park. [1] . What are we waiting for, assembled in front of the mailboxes? [2] Rent control legislation is due today.[3] . Why isn’t anything going on in the office?Why have people stopped mowing their lawns? …
This morning, the general counsel of Dirtlease came back from a seven-day drunk. The head of HR dropped by to have a word with him. ‘Knock, knock’, she said. Her heels took up most of the doorway. The GC was cradling his head in his elbows and had not yet turned on his computer. ‘Could …
The house always wins. If you play slots, the casino has an edge of up to 15%. That means that, if you put a billion dollars into the slot machines on a given night, you should expect to get back $850,000,000. That is a crappy bet. In American roulette, the edge is 5.26%. In European …
Before I was born, I was an Eisenhower Republican. I didn’t care much about ideology. I supported politicians who were good managers who rewarded competence and punished corruption, a domestic policy that favored growth with a social safety net, and a foreign policy that cultivated alliances with democracies and stood up to dictators. The Republican …
The Dirtlease staff just returned from a literary tour of Ireland. We read to a packed hall at The Printworks, in Dublin Castle. We mansplained to a writer’s group in Crumlin. We partied at Connor McGregor’s pub. We turned down sexual advances from Eve Hewson. We swam in the snotgreen sea at Forty Foot. When …
Three Pillars is an investment fund that is buying up communities on the west coast and in the southeast. Here is a disquisition that one of their founders posted about park management. Pretty much everything to say on the subject, he says well. Disclosure: I have no connection with Three Pillars Communities, their equity owners, …
The other day, while I was driving to the gym, a guy in an Acura cut me off. I rolled down the window and lifted my palm in a WTF gesture. He rolled down his window and gave me the finger. If we were Greek, I would have given him the moutsa. People who tail …
A friend emailed me yesterday about a new rent control regulation that has been passed for manufactured housing communities in unincorporated areas of Sonoma County. The day before, a maiden aunt sent me an article about Maine’s new right-of-first-refusal law for manufactured housing communities. Frank Rolfe sends articles decrying new instances of the regulation of …
Garrison Keillor was badly done by the Me Too movement. He misreads social cues because he is on the autism spectrum. He touched the back of a woman who worked for him once. She did not understand the gesture. Because of that, he was fired from MPR and put in the same bucket as Harvey …